Happy Easter

Happy Easter to you all.
When we went to Easter dinner at my sister's, she had the brother of this little fellow on the table.

Of course I had to ask for the pattern (it's from blog.kreativbuehne.de and is a freebie)
He turned out okay for the first result, but second time round I would use a different glue (I used liquid glue, but some tape with two adhesive sides would have been better)

This, That, And A Little Bit Of This, Too

A couple of smallish things have been finished.
First of I needed a new container to hold my cloth pins, after the handle of the basket I used to keep them in broke. I looked around and couldn't find something that I really liked, so I made my own thing.

First I made a paper template and then fudged my way through to the basket/bag above. It's attached to the rail with velcro. It turned out a bit on the small side, but is functional nonetheless, so I call it a win.

Next up, more pot holders.

Both pairs went to friends of mine.
I'm a bit surprised I still have cotton left overs, though I did managed to reduce the really small scraps by quite a bit.

Finally, I new pair of socks. Also a scrappy project as I used two different skeins, which each on their own wouldn't have been enough for a full pair. Pattern is 'Blender' and I simple switched the yarn every row and let the stripes surprise me. Not identical, but close enough.

A Broken Foot

No, no, don't worry, it's not one of my feet. They are fine.
But I broke the quilting foot on my sewing machine. To be more precise, the bit of wire on top that causes the foot to hop up and down while quilting simply snapped.

Of course it happened in the middle of me quilting. Darn!
Then I remember reading somewhere that somebody recommended to break a foot on purpose then wrapping some rubber band around the top to put some pressure on the spring and then use the foot not as a hopping but as a sliding foot. As I couldn't get a foot fitting my machine on short notice anyway, I decided to give it a try.

It actually works pretty good. Nice about this is that the movement is not quite a jerky as with the hopping foot, and also that you can leave the tension of the upper thread at the normal machine setting (normally I have a setting of 4.6, which I need to reduce to around 3 for quilting).
Disadvantage is that if there's a bump in your quilt, you tend to get a bit of a snag there, and also that figuring out the perfect number of coils for the rubber band is a bit tricky.

The swirly waves are done with the intact foot, and the stippling is done with the modified foot. Looks good.
Anyway, I finished the quilting more or less without further problems and am in the middle of sewing the binding on.

WiP

Currently, I have several ongoing sewing projects. I intent not to start another one, unless I've finished at least two, better even three. And with finish I mean a ready quilt, not just the top.
My current Works in Progress in order of lenght I've been working on them:
- Double Stars (Jan2016)

I have 30 blocks finished and think that's about it. I have settled on this layout, so all I need to finish the top is to sew the blocks together.

- Postage Stamps (9 patches) (Sep 2016)

At the moment I'm just putting 9 patches together, using 2 inch scraps. I'm not decided on the layout yet, but I have time for that. There are only 47 blocks so far. This is my least 'urgent' quilt, just a filler whenever I'm in the mood.

- Blue HST (Dec 2016)

I'm almost done with the blocks I need: 106 out of 111. Though I still need to do all the edge blocks, so this will take a bit longer still.

- Selvedge Feathers (Feb 2017)

So far I have 19 feathers done, so there are a few more to go. Still undecided on the layout, though I start to grow fond of placing the feather simply in opposing rows.

Other than that, I still have two quilt tops finished that need to get ready for quilting.